much in the same manner, and Calderon's Lucifer,

"Like the red outline of beginning Adam,"

might well have passed as the original draft of Milton's Satan:--

"In myself I am
A world of happiness and misery;
This I have lost, and that I must lament
For ever. In my attributes I stood
So high and so heroically great,
In lineage so supreme, and with a genius
Which penetrated with a glance the world
Beneath my feet, that, won by my high merit,
A King--whom I may call the King of Kings,
Because all others tremble in their pride
Before the terrors of his countenance--
In his high palace, roofed with brightest gems
Of living light--call them the stars of heaven--
Named me his counsellor. But the high praise
Stung me with pride and envy, and I rose
In mighty competition, to ascend
His seat, and place my foot triumphantly
Upon his subject thrones. Chastised, I know
The depth to which ambition falls. For mad
Was the attempt; and yet more mad were now
Repentance of the irrevocable deed.
Therefore I chose this ruin with the glory
Of not to be subdued, before the shame
Of reconciling me with him who reigns
By coward cession. Nor was I alone,
Nor am I now, nor shall I be, alone.
And there was hope, and there may still be hope;
For many suffrages among his vassals
Hailed me their lord and king, and many still
Are mine, and many more perchance shall be."

A striking proof that resemblance does not necessarily imply plagiarism.
Milton's affinity to Calderon has been overlooked by his commentators;
but four luminaries have been named from which he is alleged to have
drawn, however sparingly, in his golden urn--Caedmon, the Adamus Exul of
Grotius, the Adamo of the Italian dramatist Andreini, and the Lucifer of
the Dutch poet Vondel. Caedmon, first printed in 1655, it is but barely
possible that he should have known, and ere he could have known him the
conception of "Paradise Lost" was firmly implanted in his mind. External
evidence proves his acquaintance with Grotius, internal evidence his
knowledge of Andreini: and small as are his direct obligations to the
Italian drama, we can easily believe with Hayley that "his fancy caught
fire from that spirited, though irregular and fantastic composition."
Vondel's Lucifer--whose subject is not the fall of Adam, but the fall of
Satan-